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It's humbling to think that these smartwatches feature SoCs that should be comparable in CPU/GPU performance to my 2012 Nexus 7. These are extremely capable computers, certainly capable of running the majority of content on the Play Store, though not in a practical way given the ultra-small display.Reply

You are correct! I remember reading that the clock rate of the CPU in these smartwatches was around 1.2GHz, but I think that was literature on the typical clocks of the SoC itself (targeted for low-end smartphones). In practice, a little googling has revealed that they are clocked at around 800MHz, which is ~60% of the speed (and the A7 is slower than the A9). I would expect that the GPU would be underclocked as well (though even at very low-clocks, the 305 may be comparable to the Tegra 3).

Given another generation iteration, these devices should feature Cortex A53, or equivalent CPUs which would be clock-for-clock as capable as the A9 found in Nexus 7, though it remains to be seen if the final clock speed will reach the 1.3GHz found in the tablet. Given a node-shrink (which is looking more like 14nm FinFET every day) they most certainly should perform as well, if not better.

As it currently stands, these smartwatches are still very capable computers!Reply

I wouldn't be surprised to see them go the other direction. Like macs, I don't see any need for a quad core A7 CPU in the first place. I suspect it had more to do with picking something that would require minimal porting effort and/or being able to use an off the shelf SoC with support for features that haven't trickled down to lower end chips (eg the newest bluetooth), and wouldn't be surprised if a future generation launched with a dual core A5 or even a single core M3 to extend battery life or allow for a smaller package.Reply

The highest clock speed may not be the best way to save power but doing Intel's race to sleep method for something like this is still valid and requires a powerful CPU to actually be the lowest energy usage that a responsive device is going to get. The super low wattage CPUs are used in devices that don't have to directly interact with us and so we don't notice slower speed.Reply

Preliminary benchmarking results suggest that only 1 core is enabled. (Single and multi-core versions of geekbench returned the same results.) This lends support to my speculation that the chip was picked primarily because it made implementation easier, not because they needed this much cpu power.

These things look surprisingly space inefficient on the inside... Looks like there's significant room for improvement for manufacturers who really go nuts in miniaturization, like mounting components to thinner flexible substrates.Reply

Yes, I thought the same. These things almost look like prototypes, there's a lot you could do with deeper integration here. Just shows that they aren't really committed to the very idea of smartwatches it seems. The quad-cores with only one core enabled also show that this is just about getting something out of the door as quickly as possible.

It's a underfill material to help keep the BGA (ball grid array) packages from popping off the board if it is flexed. Essentially a glue to hold the chips on and improve reliability. Most smartphones will have it as well.Reply

Super lame that they have to use phone parts. A phone SoC , that Synaptics touch, they could easily use something with 2 point touch. They are freaking giants. they could make an effort to do it right. This is not how you sell 10 million units in a quarter and ofc the market won't take off with pathetic hardware , insane pricing and lack of functionality. Reply

Still, CPU requirements are small and the GPU has only very few pixels to throw around (compared to modern smartphones). Using actual smartphone SoCs for these things isn't the best idea when comes to battery life. If you have an actual idea what the thing will do and a long-term plan and can design your own SoC towards that you should be able to get by with less power.Reply